by Chris Price

cprice@thekmgroup.co.uk

He wore a striped mauve suit to the wedding of his daughter Jade and it’s turning out to be a time of celebration for proud dad and former Dartford Grammar School pupil Mick Jagger.

This Thursday he and fellow Wentworth Primary School classmate Keith Richards will mark a milestone in their amazing rock ‘n’ roll journey – it will be 50 years since their first gig as the fresh-faced members of The Rolling Stones.

The show took place at the Marquee Club in London’s Oxford Street on July 12, 1962, with a very different line-up to the one playing across the world today.

Stepping out on stage with Jagger and Richards were slide guitarist Brian Jones, Ian Stewart on piano, Dick Taylor, another Dartford lad, on bass and drummer Mick Avory, later famously of the Kinks.

It was Taylor who originally formed a band with Jagger and Richards, later recruiting Brian Jones from Alexis Korner’s seminal London R&B band Blues Incorporated.

Jones, who would leave the band in 1969, troubled by drug use, and be found dead in his swimming pool less than a month later christened the band during a phone call to Jazz News.

According to Richards, when Jones was asked for the band’s name, he saw a Muddy Waters LP on the floor, on which one of the tracks was Rollin’ Stone.

During their first show they played Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley songs, inspired by Jagger and Richards’ love of the two electric guitar pioneers.

Shortly afterwards Taylor would leave the band – eventually forming the Pretty Things – and he was replaced by bassist Bill Wyman.

Mick Avory also left soon afterwards and the band experimented with drummer Tony Chapman before finally persuading current sticksman Charlie Watts, then of Blues Incorporated, to join in January 1963.

Ian Stewart, who played piano at their first gig, was forced out of the band by their manager Andrew Loog Oldham in May 1963 but remained as the band’s road manager and session pianist.

He performed on every Stones album until his death in 1985, aged 47, and was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the band in 1989.

Later members were guitarist Mick Taylor from 1969 to 1974 before The Faces’ Ronnie Wood joined in 1976, completing the four members of the band now recognised as the Rolling Stones.